There's an election coming, but neither side is ready for it

There is no better test of a party’s readiness for an election than its ability to find the best candidates. The sharpest campaign tactics may not be enough if the right candidates cannot be found, or are found too late to make a difference.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull: in election mode.Credit:AAP

Obvious, right? Well, not obvious enough for some. The next federal election is approaching so quickly that warning signs should be flashing for Labor and the Liberals over their search for candidates to win key seats.

For all the talk about an early election, the two major parties are not ready for the contest. Labor and the Liberals are yet to finalise candidates in most key states and would have to rush the process if Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called an election in the next few months.

To see these political parties agonise over the selection of their candidates is to open the door, just a little, on the rivalries and weaknesses on both sides.

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We also get a glimpse of who loses first when powerbrokers make a decision. This is obvious, too: it is the rank and file member who is meant to be the lifeblood of his or her party.

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In Victoria, for instance, both major parties are preparing to suspend the rights of ordinary party members in order to make up for lost time in choosing candidates.

A Labor administrative committee will meet this Wednesday to decide whether to skip preselections for sitting federal MPs, ruling that anyone who has a seat gets to keep it and fight for it at the election.

The Liberals, meanwhile, are heading towards the same outcome. Their Victorian administrative committee is debating whether to endorse every existing MP in his or her seat. The party’s conservatives have the numbers on the committee to make sure this happens if they choose, at a meeting on July 27.

Both parties are dealing with difficult circumstances in Victoria. The Australian Electoral Commission only settled a redistribution of federal seats in that state on June 20, although the outcome had been clear in a draft plan in April. The state election is due on November 24. Once the state campaign gets underway in earnest, there will be very little time to deal with federal matters before Christmas.

Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy and Member for Port Adelaide, Mark Butler.Credit:Joe Castro

This makes the pressures in Victoria far greater than those in South Australia, for instance, where a redistribution means Labor is still not sure what seat will be chosen for energy spokesman Mark Butler.

There is no doubt the problems are deeper on the Liberal side in Victoria. The Labor Party chose some of its Victorian candidates earlier this year, so it knows who it will be running in key marginal seats like Corangamite, Dunckley and La Trobe.

The Liberals not only have a question mark over their own seats but are yet to decide who to run against Labor in seats like Bendigo, Isaacs, Hotham and Macnamara (previously Melbourne Ports). It could take until September, or even October, for these candidates to be found.

Labor has always prided itself on having a stronger branch structure and party machine than the Liberals, helped in part by the way unions control the numbers in every internal contest. The fact that the Liberals have held power in Canberra more often than Labor since World War II shows that a strong branch structure isn’t everything.

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Even so, the Liberals now risk looking weaker than Labor on giving party members a say in who stands for election. Labor branches in Victoria helped choose some of their candidates earlier this year, but Liberal branches are yet to gain the same right.

“What’s the point of being in a party if these rights are taken away from members?” asks one Liberal. It is a fair question – and it comes at a time when party membership is in decline.

The Victorian problems are part of a bigger factional play for the Liberals, with conservatives such as Marcus Bastiaan and Michael Sukkar holding sway over the state party. This leads to inevitable complaints from the moderates, not unlike the way conservatives in NSW complain about the control of their Liberal division by the other side.

This is about raw power more than philosophy. The conservatives in Victoria seek to suspend plebiscites to give members a chance to choose candidates, while the conservatives in NSW have championed plebiscites for years. What suits Tony Abbott in Warringah does not suit Kevin Andrews in Menzies, the seat where the Victorian conservatives are most anxious to protect one of their own against a challenge.

Liberals say that some new members in Victoria are signed up by the conservatives, never attend branch meetings, never engage with their local MP and only turn up when a vote is on. The moderates fear the arrival of new members who are signed up as a bloc from a local church group or rival political party, like the Australian Christians. The conservatives argue the boost to numbers can only help at the next election.

Of course, powerbrokers only welcome members when they can stack a branch. The one thing they do not want is an influx of new members who do not side loyally with a faction, preferably their own. A new member without debts or ties to one side or the other is a source of uncertainty.

Faction leaders thrive when party membership is shrinking; it just makes it easier to control the percentages. If there is a backlash from party members who lose a chance to select their candidates, those in power will ride it out. They always do.